The following was part of a podcast we viewed in my last section of class. Elder Holland is such a powerful speaker. If you get a chance, go to lds.org and pull up this talk and listen to him give it. I know without a doubt that these warnings are important. I know of families who have completely fallen away from the truth because the parents got offended. These wonderful people are struggling and floundering without oars to direct their paths.
Listen to a helpful warning by Elder Holland about how parents should nurture their children’s spiritual growth by the way the parents share their own testimony and discuss their own conversion in their home.
“We all learn “line upon line, precept upon precept,” with the goal being authentic religious faith informing genuine Christlike living. In this there is no place for coercion or manipulation, no place for intimidation or hypocrisy. But no child in this Church should be left with uncertainty about his or her parents’ devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Restoration of His Church, and the reality of living prophets and apostles who, now as in earlier days, lead that Church according to “the will of the Lord, … the mind of the Lord, … the word of the Lord, … and the power of God unto salvation.” …
“Parents simply cannot flirt with skepticism or cynicism, then be surprised when their children expand that flirtation into full-blown romance. If I matters of faith and belief children are at risk of being swept downstream by this intellectual current or that cultural rapid, we as their parents must be more certain than ever to hold to anchored unmistakable moorings clearly recognizable to those of our own household. It won’t help anyone if we go over the edge with them, explaining through the roar of the falls all the way down that we really did know the Church was true and that the keys of the priesthood really were lodged there but we just didn’t want to stifle anyone’s freedom to think otherwise. No, we can hardly expect the children to get to shore safely if the parents don’t seem to know where to anchor their own boat.
“We can be reasonably active, meeting-going Latter-day Saints, but if we do not live lives of gospel integrity and convey to our children powerful heartfelt convictions regarding the truthfulness of the Restoration and the divine guidance of the Church from the first Vision to this very hour, then those children may, to our regret but not surprise, turn out not to be visibly active, meeting-going Letter-day Saints or sometimes anything close to it.
“What a classic example of the warning Elder Richard L. Evans once gave.
“Said he: “sometimes some parents mistakenly feel that they can relax a little as to conduct and conformity or take perhaps a so called liberal view of basic and fundamental things-thinking that a little laxness or indulgence won’t matter-or they may fail to teach or to attend Church, or may voice critical views. Some parents … seem to feel that they can ease up a little on the fundamentals without affecting their family or their family’s future. But,” he observed, “if a parent goes a little off course, the children are likely to exceed the parent’s example.” 7 to lead a child (or anyone else!), even inadvertently, away from faithfulness, away from loyalty and bedrock belief simply because we want to be clever or independent is license no parent nor any other person has ever been given.” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland “A Prayer for the Children,” Conference Report, April 2003)
